Rambling, rumbling, rumination

Torchlight, Torchbright

First torch I see tonight,
Wish I may, wish I might,
Find a game worth playing tonight.

Yes, it’s silly; yes, I’m not terribly original; yes, it fits the game well enough…

LATE BREAKING ADDITION:

Pete over at DragonChasers has a post up with a link to an interview of the Runic Games CEO (thanks, Pete!). Torchlight is meant to segue into an MMO at some point. This interview has some great comments, and it sounds like these guys understand the market. Very candid, if a bit “softball”, this interview is well worth a peek if you’re interested in Torchlight:

Getting the demo via Steam actually is content limited, rather than time limited, like the demo via Runic directly. This is great news, since either preference can be accommodated.

…

I downloaded the Torchlight demo to see just what the fuss is about. It’s a beast of a 413 MB download (though that’s smaller than many modern games) According to the FAQ, that’s the footprint for the installed game, so I suspect that the demo download really is just the full game. The catch is that you’re limited to only playing for 120 minutes.

I’m a bit ambivalent about that, actually. I’m of a mind that demos function better when they aren’t time-limited, but rather, content limited. There’s a compelling case to be made in either direction, though, so it’s not something that I’m too fussy about. Just know going in that the Torchlight demo is of the time-limited variety. (They didn’t point out on the site, as far as I could tell.)

At any rate, I figured I’d have two good hours with the game. That’s fair enough to get a sense of what it has to offer, I think. It’s not like you’re going to Torchlight for a fifty hour story. You’re going to play it for some aesthetically appealing dungeon crawling. And well… WYSIWYG. Truth in Advertising.

Torchlight is a dungeon crawler with some satisfyingly fun gameplay. The art direction is solid, and sits in a nice space between cartoony and emogothpixelshader. (Though the token chick is still just a bimbo with a gun. No surprise, no progress.) It’s not War and Peace, it’s not Braid, it’s not Portal. It’s a visually appealing loot treadmill with plenty of monsters to be whacked. If that’s the sort of fun you’re looking for, Torchlight will make you a very happy gamer. The lovely price point of $20 is icing on the cake.

I wound up playing as an Alchemist with a Dog for a pet. I chased the “pet control” talent tree and wound up with my Dog and three little Imps shuffling around from place to place as I chipped in magic ranged attacks and pistol/wand shots from the back row. Yeah, I was a Huntard/Warlock hybrid… and I loved it. It almost felt like a squad based RTS with minimalist controls. I’d bum rush a herd of baddies, let my little Zerglings and Ultralisk go to town at close range, and serve up three flavors of ranged PAIN. When the field was clear, I’d claim the spoils (walking over gold picks it up automatically, but you still need to click on items individually) and spoil for another fight.

Yummy, yummy mindless loot pinata fun. It’s not something that I’d ever do all day, every day, but man, for the two hours I had the game running, I was a happy camper. It’s probably best played in runs like that in between other gaming so you don’t get tired of it. Unless you live on that sort of thing anyway. *shrug*

Of course, it’s not all hugs and roses. (Or is that guns and kisses? I can never remember.) As it happens, I was staring at a loading screen for almost a quarter of my time in the game. My laptop isn’t cutting edge, but neither is it a dinosaur. This bothered me a little bit, but I can’t really fault the game much for it; my machine may simply be slow. It just stunk when my time in the game was limited. No “pick up all local loot” button seems a glaring omission to me. There isn’t much here for womens’ lib in games. There is no respec function without a mod. (But the modding tools look really powerful.) You can only get the game via digital download, either from the devs directly or via Steam. Since I don’t like Steam much these days and I’m not sure about the DRM stance of the dev download, I’m a bit leery of such a purchase. Maybe I’ll pick it up in a box when they get around to releasing it that way.

None of these are all that terrible, and really, what the Torchlight guys are offering is a gem of a game. I’m still on the bubble about actually buying it (since I have too much going on already and I don’t want to be tied to the internet or limited downloads for actually playing the game… especially if I want to install it on more than one machine), but I can readily recommend it to fans of the dungeon crawling genre.

If nothing else, I’m keeping my eye on the game to see what they do with the proposed transition into an MMO. I’m leery of that just because I don’t like the internet tether… but I do wish them well. The game will never be the “virtual world” that I’ve asked for time and again, but as a straight up funhouse grind, it works beautifully. Sometimes, even for theorytwits like me, that hits the sweet “zoning out” spot just right.

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13 Responses

I haven’t played Torchlight much since I picked it up, largely because a) Dragon Age came out shortly after, and b) I’ve been pretty busy IRL. I definitely agree with your assessment though. It’s colorful, mindless fun, where story and character development are at most briefly waved at from a distance as the game speeds by whooping and hollering.

Having no “loot all” function is annoying, especially when the ground is liberally covered in shinies to pick up. Just let me grab ’em all, don’t make me hunt for ’em.

I went with a pet class as well and found it was good crunchy fun. My pets usually did a good enough job at killing everything around me, so even on Hard difficulty I didn’t have to worry much about the baddies actually hurting my character. The action is visceral and very responsive. It’s not remotely groundbreaking, in any way whatsoever, but hey, it’s well done and really shines for what it is.

I do not regret buying it, but actually I am not playing it anymore. I am playing LOTRO when I have time to play, and I will get Dragon Age on xmas.

I was talking to one of my guildmates yesterday about Diablo 3 and Torchlight, and he had the same idea as me, the gameplay is cool and everybody loves it, but I think this kind of gameplay is a bit dated and not really what people are looking for nowdays – despite all the love for Torchlight. It is hard to be hard to this game, despite the longish loading and minor gripes. 🙂

TFN, honestly, I didn’t even have to avoid citing Diablo. I simply didn’t think of it. Sure, I played the demo of the first one ages ago, sure, I know about the game, sure, Torchlight is made by Diablo veterans… but I never did play much of Diablo, and never played D2. I’m just taking Torchlight as it comes. *sheepish grin*

I might even fire up the demo on a different computer this weekend… and I’m considering a Steam purchase (I think I might be able to get the Offline mode working). The release of the modding tools actually has me itching to tinker a bit, which is just as interesting to me as actually playing the game.

Of course, I’m also the sort to be utterly fascinated by the Starcraft editor, but I never did all that much with it. I just like having the *potential* to exercise such power over a game… must be the game designer in me. 🙂

I just picked it up myself after having seen it mentioned on The Electric Playground a few days ago. I’ve been on the lookout for something in the Diablo Genre for some time now. I did not care for THQ’s ‘Titan Quest’ at all so this turned out to be a bit of a gem for me.

I agree with you on the Content Limited rather than Time Limited front wholeheartedly though. I was thoroughly enjoying my Destroyer and had just reached Level 7 when the game reached the 120 Minute mark. Of course I just went out and bought it from Runic right then and there because, for the money, I consider it to be a fantastic game.

You get 10 Activations of the game with your purchase which I think is more than fair for the likely lifespan of this game and the Community is highly active with the Modding Tools so far as I have seen.

You were correct about the initial download being the Full game, there is nothing else to Download when you purchase. You just pop your key in where it prompts you and you are back up and running once again.

I was a bit surprised to hear about your load time concerns though, I had the completely opposite experience on both of the machines I have the game running on. At most I think I looked at Load Screens for perhaps a few seconds up to a maximum of 8-10.

I did notice there is a ‘Netbook’ mode in the Settings area, perhaps that might make the game run more smoothly in a Laptop environment.

A final note on the Steam side of your Post. From what some of the Community Members at the Runic Forums have said Steam has a different DRM setup on the game which limits the # of Installs you are given so you might be better served buying the game from Runic itself. I can’t corroborate the findings however so it might be best to just go in heads up!

[…] demo or shareware program, and a content-limited one. As I noted back in my Torchlight article, I really didn’t like the time-limited demo the publishers offered, but the Steam content-limit…, since I was able to explore the game mechanics for as long as I wanted, and it left me wanting […]

[…] minutes, but they are time-limited, not content limited, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’m not, as I’ve noted before, so I list this as a con, tempered by the realization that you can play the demo over and over, it […]